beneath shit mountain
Here, this is the current list of unfortunate events in the publishing world.
Ms. Hamilton's tone can be "Lord of the Rings"- lofty. ("Brother, do not do this to us. We do not need the shining ones. We are goblin, and that is better." ) But this is not a book too mystical to notice washboard abs on a weight-lifter or to stint on goblin romance. Early in her story, someone explains that "the goblins do not see same-sex sex as a bad or shameful thing. If it's the way you swing, it's the way you swing."
Remember Tolkien, where over 1500 pages no one even went to the bathroom? I suppose there's something to be said for a completely imagined fictive world, but you'd think some of this could be left to the slash-fiction writers.
And in a book determined to move so fast that it makes John Grisham look like Henry James, Mr. Meltzer also manages to pack in tourist-worthy scenery: the Capitol Dome, the Washington Monument and Mount Rushmore, too. Mount Rushmore? It seems that halfway through this initially sane and lively book, the chase sequences take over and the plot moves from the corridors of power to an abandoned gold mine. And the story's angle about secret weapons has a secret weapon of its own: the neutrino.... If the neutrino ever turns up in a diet scheme, it's bound to find readers, for sure.
I will skip the obvious question of how you make a weapon out of a particle that doesn't interact with anything and move to the diet question. Nutri-No. Dr. Neutrino's Massless Diet. Luscious Lepton Lunches. All this slop makes me so tired.
This extensive Q&A on radio promotion basically underscores how impossible it is to promote anything, even on college stations, without a nest egg of a few thousand dollars. Well, fuck it. My goals are humble: I just don't want to cart ten boxes of unsold albums to California when I move. So I have to get rid of them before them. If the only way to get rid of them is to send them all to zines and college stations, then I guess that's what I'll do. Is it possible to develop a tolerance to decongestant? I asked the cat if life was worth living; she didn't answer.
